Helen Bonner

Helen Bonner grew up in the Sierra foothills near Lake Tahoe, where her parents ran a roadside cafe in the '40's. She learned story telling from sitting behind the stove on snowy nights, listening to travellers tell theirs. She went on to

be a "housewife", mother, secretary, news reporter, honor student, and finally, University professor, writing stories the whole time, usually putting them in drawers until she had time to edit them. Her short stories have appeared in many

publications, from True Confession to Writers Forum, her Jeannette Rankin screenplay has been optioned, her plays produced at several theaters, and her two memoirs, the Laid Daughter and First Love Last, are on Amazon. Her first novel, Cry Dance, was published in 2010, and Dolphin Papers, another work of fiction, followed in 2011. "I like to write about what brings us together," Bonner says. " That's what all my books, whether sci-fi like Dolphin Papers or a story of a Jesus like young woman who truly believes there is no death, like Cry Dance, are about. I like to tell stories about possibilities. War stories or true romance stories or battle stories are fine,the world needs them, but I think we need more stories about how to stay out of wars and hatred and all that." Readers must want that too, because both Cry Dance and Dolphin papers have won national awards, the Eric Hoffer award and the Sharp Writ award. Bonner's next book, to be published in 2013, is MsDemeanors, a novel about the 1970's.